


Fletch

by speckledsolanaceae



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Blood, Elements of Horror, Guardian Angels, M/M, Original Universe, Parallel Universes, Witches, all of wayv features, and so does johnny
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-19
Updated: 2020-05-19
Packaged: 2021-03-03 03:21:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 10,036
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24278053
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/speckledsolanaceae/pseuds/speckledsolanaceae
Summary: Lots of rules are broken to save one life.
Relationships: Chittaphon Leechaiyapornkul | Ten/Wong Kun Hang | Hendery
Comments: 16
Kudos: 89





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [jeannedarc](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jeannedarc/gifts).



> Quick question: why isn't tendery's ship name tender?
> 
> Other things: There is blood and shock violence in chapter 1. This fic will feel like horror! But only for chapter 1. If you are easily triggered by panic, tread with caution, please. As always, your mental health is way more important than my fic ♡ 
> 
> Last thing: Happy birthday, Appia! I absolutely adore you and am biting my nails hoping this feels like a good gift.

Through the tint of his sunglasses, the moon is a lovely lilac. High and large, she leaks all over the clearing he’s planted himself in, boots sunk into the pebbled mud of the creekbed as the tips of the river grasses try to peek into the collars through to his socks.

In the sweeping waves of this creek-cracked field, Ten takes a breath of moonlight and selects one of the arrows from the bag he’s dropped onto the ground. Its purple head weeps dust as he nocks and raises his witch bow.

Every full moon allows him to see Midnight Haunts just fine, but under a super moon, everything is clearer. He’s waiting, half-drawn and ready. If he thinks about it, he can almost feel the lady who hired him watch from her lit window more than a football field’s distance away.

Midnight Haunts aren’t particularly dangerous, but they will drive an old woman batty just fine. Besides, it’s good money.

A flash of black unfurls from the leftmost corner of his vision, he draws the arrow back, and as the Haunt scrapes crosswise across the sky, he lets go.

The arrow only sings for a moment before the whole sky wheezes and sucks the Haunt’s muted shriek into silence, swallowing its ragged, feathered form into the fissure Ten’s arrow created. His arrow disappears with the creature, but that’s the way it goes.

Ten releases the breath he’d been holding, then nearly coughs on it when, from the disappearing crack in the sky, something tiny and teardropped squeezes out and tumbles to the grasses below.

He’s done this dozens of times—getting rid of Haunts. It’s something he knows how to do and has down to a learned skill, but he’s never even heard of something slipping out of a rift.

Keeping his sunglasses on, he picks his way out of the creek and grabs his bag from the bank on the way. Bow slung over his shoulder and backpack strap in his hands, he nears where he saw the little moonlit tidbit fall. It doesn’t stand out to him right away in the faded darkness and dense shadows, but a meter out and he’s spotted something small and crimson like a crystallized drop of blood.

Not one to be an idiot, out of his bag he pulls out one of those little tissue packets and only picks up the glimmering abnormality once he has three tissues as a barrier between his fingertips and whatever it is.

What first comes to mind is a ruby, followed closely by the realization that it’s connected seamlessly to a watery and thin chain. His sunglasses pick up no auras, and his eyes don’t either after he lifts the lenses up to his hairline.

Crouching in the grass with the night coming slowly back alive around him, he’s at a loss.

* * *

“Did you kill it?”

Ten shrugs his bag forward under his arm so he can stow away both the jar of iced tea the old woman hands over to him and the packet of money about a centimeter thick. “Night creatures can’t be killed over here, ma’am,” he reminds her. He’d promised her earlier that the most he could do was banish it back to where it came from. “They’re invincible on this side.”

“But it won’t come back?” Her wrinkles shake when she speaks, and she looks seconds away from pacing back into her kitchen to bring him another anxious treat of some sort.

“No,” he tells her firmly, putting as much weight and reassurance he can into that once word. They can’t be killed, but there are a multitude of other ways to rid someone of a Night creature. “It won’t. And if anything comes to bother you again, which is extremely rare,” he says, “then there’s a bigger problem at hand and I’ll return to help you for free. I promise.” He needs money, but he absolutely isn’t without empathy or social consciousness. It's immoral to milk an old woman dry—especially a frightened one.

Her restlessness seems to settle, watery eyes a little less pinched, and he smiles at her. “Are you okay if I leave you?” he asks, and she nods her little head.

“You’ll be safe out there?” she asks as if she doesn’t know what he is and hired him for his skills in being utterly safe after dark specifically. He barely manages not to laugh.

“Absolutely.”

* * *

She watches from her kitchen window while he slips his bow and bag into the back seat of his car, extracting his keys with a swing of his finger. He waves to her before ducking into the driver’s seat, but does not let himself relax into the leather. Despite most of his specialized work needing to be done nocturnally, he still has a shift at the restaurant in the morning. If he eases back now, he may not stay awake long enough to get back home.

He waits until he’s no longer on the offroad path to her house before he cranks his late-night driving playlist. Breathing out, he focuses on the street in front of him, the GPS he’s got pulled up, and shout-singing to Travis Mills.

It works in his favor—he can feel the adrenaline of freedom like always, the success of a job, driving alone, roads clear shooting him full of exhilaration like always. He can feel a shiver working up his spine from sleeplessness, undoubtedly, but he’s twenty minutes into his drive by the time it starts tugging nervously at him. He won't fall asleep at the wheel. He’ll be fine.

He switches artists, shaking out his arms while sitting at a red light, and he has fifteen more minutes. He can make it.

The light turns green.

All at once, there’s a shift.

He feels a breath against his cheek. “Ten.”

He screams and jerks the wheel to the left, the car skids, and there’s a horrendous rushing sound as his right mirror is immediately broken straight off by a passing truck. It comes from the opposite direction—red light, out of nowhere, fluorescent blue. _We’ve Got Your Back!_ is painted on its trailer. The interceptor is utterly soundless aside from the rush of its engine passing, the screech of it taking paint off the right side of his car, and his own headlight getting crushed. Ten, on the other hand, has his palm slammed into his horn and hasn’t stopped screaming.

His horn blares uselessly as the truck carries on.

Ten’s left gasping in the middle of an empty intersection with no one as witness.

It takes him four seconds to gather his shaky wits and get out of the road. He pulls over on the opposite side of the intersection, gagging on fear, shaking. When he looks into the rearview mirror, the only things behind him are his bow and bag. He turns more fully, trying not to hyperventilate as he checks behind the seats, under, even in his bag. Nothing.

He sags against the leather, but does not relax. Instead, his own mortality hits him harder than the truck did. He cannot explain the mess of mindlessness he experiences in the next minute. At some point he’s crying, at another he’s deleting a text he’d composed full of typos, and then finally he’s pulling away from the curb, music off, windows down, knuckles white against the steering wheel.

* * *

He barely gives himself time to grab his things from the back seat before he’s running up the stairs of his apartment complex and unlocking his door with still-trembling hands. The entire rest of his drive was the most hyperaware blur he’s ever experienced, and as soon as he has the door locked again against his back, he crashes.

“Yangyang!” he cries, sinking down the wood of their door. Everyone else is assuredly out—it’s only been him and Yangyang for the past three days. When there’s no reply, he tries again, but his voice crackles around the edges, used up from screaming. He hears a heavy sound of something hitting the floor, and then one of the doors down the hallway ahead of him opens.

“Jesus Christ,” Yangyang says, so Ten thinks he must look as hysterical as he feels. Yangyang has his bangles on and a sprig of mint behind his ear, which means Ten interrupted something. It’s especially obvious when Yangyang has to pause before crouching next to him so he can cough leaves into his inner elbow. “What happened?” he croaks.

“I almost got T-boned by a fucking _truck,”_ Ten says, and watches as Yangyang’s expression morphs from concern into shock.

“Jesus,” Yangyang says, as if he only knows one god. “Jesus, Ten. Are you hurt?” His hands hover over him.

How does he tell him that he would have died if it weren’t for a breath against his cheek and his name from nowhere? “I turned the wheel at the last second,” he says, barely more than a rasp, shaking his head as the door digs into his spine.

“Shit,” Yangyang says and scoots up to sit right next to him and tug him into a hug. Yangyang’s not one for physical comfort, but Ten supposes even he has his moments.

* * *

_“of course he would.”_

_the chair rolls its occupant across the floor. “you don’t know him.”_

_“you’ve told me about him.”_

_“tell me what you would do.”_

_the ceiling is low, almost low enough to touch the stroke of hair back against a pale, unfamiliar forehead. the chair creaks as its load is lifted, wheeling slowly away from bare heels._

_the walls, the floor, the random, shifting furniture—they’re all faded and foggy. muted colors burst from every empty footstep the figure behind him takes. ten feels groggy, drunk, and watches the chair as it slides in his direction against the glossy floors._

_somehow he knows he can’t breathe, can’t move, can’t look away from the watery mirror on the wall. can only stare at the reversals of motion, the swirling air._

_“i couldn’t say. mine doesn’t bother with the n—”_

_the chair hits ten’s back and all motion freezes, pulsing, silent._

_there’s a breath against his cheek._

_“go_ home, _ten.”_

He wakes with a gasp to his alarm, shuddering, gagging on an unnamed fear in his throat.

He slaps around for his phone, stuffing his face in his pillow and riding out the painful beat of his heart and tight, trembling rush of his breathing.

* * *

For someone who managed to avoid the great reaper, by the time he calms and drags himself from the bed, he feels a little more like death than he ought to feel. The morning passes sluggishly as he tries to avoid thinking about anything at all, ears locked into his music, ignoring the way his body aches from whiplash as he knocks back his morning tea.

He wouldn’t have been able to make himself drive even if he wanted to—instead, he shoves his arrows out of his backpack and sets out to walk to work an hour earlier than the start of his shift.

Twenty minutes into his trek under the chilled morning sun, he can feel himself start to breathe more easily, and by the time he’s crossed at least five streets safely, he feels fine. The wind brushes over him, shaking the breath off his cheek, and music crashes into his ears until he can hear nothing but irrelevant words about love. Love is something he ought to be concerning himself with on a Monday morning, he tells himself.

He’s fine.

He gets into work, clocks in, changes in the back room with the door locked, does his rituals to start the day while, in the kitchens, Kun tries not to rub his eyes with his gloved hands while doing prepwork. “How was your night?” asks Kun, looking like he slept a blink and maybe only that.

“It was fine,” Ten says because he’s hellbent on forgetting.

* * *

The morning shift is slow but not sluggish. The customers are taciturn but not rude. Ten forgets why he’s sore by the time Johnny comes in to help with the lunch hour rush, and when it passes and the restaurant’s at a trickle, he has time to for a break longer than fifteen minutes.

He busies himself over a rice bowl and emails and almost forgets to lock the door on his bathroom break. When he looks in the mirror, he can see he’s tired. At most, he slept two hours when he should have by all means gotten three and a half. Ninety minutes means far more to the sleep-deprived. He rubs under his eyes and turns on the water to give himself a refresh. Against his wet palms and the flowing water, he just lets himself breathe for a moment before using his shirtsleeve to dry his eyes.

When he blinks them open, the motion sensor light has turned off. It’s happened numerous times before, but it’s still unnerving.

He flicks his hands first, turns off the faucet, then wipes down his front to dry his palms before carefully stepping back and trying to locate the button. Flapping his arms around to try to activate it is too much work when it’s three steps away.

For a moment, he almost slips on a wet patch on the linoleum and thinks he probably should have just brought out his phone light to make this easier, but then he’s already found the button and the room flushes with light.

He slams his elbow into the wall and almost cries out.

What he almost slipped in wasn’t water.

It was blood.

It is blood slopped crimson behind where he’d stood then streaking in two long, heavy strokes toward the door before cutting off entirely where he stood now.

Ten feels the shake begin in his hands again, throat swallowing, teeth biting down on the inside of his cheek so as not to cry.

He checks the ceiling with a slow crane of his head and sees nothing. He heard nothing, felt nothing, had absolutely _nothing_ to go off of, and he's terrified. He unlocks the door and pushes it open, checks the hallway with hiccuping breaths, then leaves it swinging wide so he can wipe the blood off the sole of his shoe. He knows he should call custodial, but he can’t.

It looks like Julius Caesar died right behind him and the blood sank down his legs before he got dragged.

He can’t call custodial, but he sure as hell can’t leave the door closed and still feel like he’ll make it through the day alive.

By the time he’s cleaned all of it up, he’s five minutes over his break, but his hands are shaking so badly and he must be so pale that Johnny doesn’t say a word.

* * *

He asks for a ride home with Kun, too afraid to be alone without protection from anything. The most he has in his backpack is a switchblade, and both times anything has happened to him, it’s been too fast or too silent for him to act.

“Are you okay?” Kun asks. He’s obviously relieved to get off his shift, but his features are pinching as he takes in how reserved Ten is. He’s normally at least smiling, isn’t he?

Ten offers a weak, watered-down grin. “Tired.”

“You can ask me to pick you up next time we share a shift,” he says kindly. Always kind.

“I’ll try to pay attention,” Ten says and watches as Kun turns the ignition. He pulls out of the staff parking lot without a care in the world, easy, warm, quiet. “How’s things with, uh…” Ten falters, failing to remember the last time he asked about Kun’s slow courting of their coworker. His mind is fuzzy and frayed. It could have been last week or last month.

“Johnny?” Kun supplies, and Ten’s simply relieved he doesn’t seem bothered.

“Yeah.”

“Good!” he says. “Good, I think. He managed to trade shifts with Chungha so we can take this weekend to go on a hike together. It’s been awhile since we’ve been able to get out of this—” He gestures briefly. “—suburbia.”

Ten nods and sinks into Kun’s talking, supplying questions when needed, and Kun seems to be reading the room just fine, keeping the conversation easy. He doesn’t force Ten to talk, and Ten gets to learn about Johnny’s roommate’s snake, which he didn’t previously know about. Ten’s impressed, frankly, that Kun only needs to ask for directions toward the end, flattered by his memory and embarrassed by his own.

He pulls up in front of the complex, flashing his dimples in a smile but managing to look concerned in his eyes while Ten drags himself out of the car. “Get some sleep, okay?”

Ten holds back a heavy exhale and smiles back. “Drive safe.”

* * *

_ten knows what knives sound like. there are two blades sliding together in the masses of fog and color, then the sound of running water._

_“you really can’t?”_

_“i really can’t.” a sigh pulls through the muggy air as ten stares at the mirror in front of him. it feels like a different room, a different place. a piece of furniture creaks. “if i touch—”_

_“he’s here again.”_

_ten feels something push his shoulder and staggers, gasping._

_“i told you to go_ home _, ten.”_

Ten struggles awake, choking, and he’s crying before he even realizes it. Somewhere in the apartment, someone is announcing their presence, and it takes him a few seconds to realize it’s Yukhei through the fog in his head.

His door is thrown open. “Ten! I’m h—are you crying?”

“Ten’s crying?” he hears Yangyang ask from the hallway, and Ten tries to pry himself into a sit and shove his tears away, but not before Yukhei’s face crumples in confirmation and Yangyang witnesses the shine on his cheeks as well. “He got in a crash yesterday,” Yangyang says quietly.

 _“Ten,”_ Yukhei says with emotion. He wastes not a single second immediately pressing himself up onto Ten’s bed to pull him into a hug.

He smells like summer, and Ten buries himself in the comfort of his arms and neck. Yukhei’s so much bigger than him, but it feels like everything he needs in that moment.

“You’re not hurt?” Yukhei mumbles, petting Ten’s hair like he might an oversized kitten.

Ten shakes his head and grabs the back of Yukhei’s shirt, soaking in the sun. Yukhei relaxes, pressing his weight into Ten, and it feels good. God, he missed having Yukhei home.

“When’s Winwin back?” he croaks, and Yangyang answers him from the doorway.

“He texted saying he’ll be a few hours behind. I’ll be driving out to grab him. Is your—is your car in a good enough—”

“Right mirror’s snapped off,” Ten mumbles, failing not to sound miserable, and Yukhei pulls back to brush Ten's hair back from his forehead. His eyebrows are pinched over his big, empathetic eyes.

“You’re okay,” Yukhei says softly. “Should we order fried chicken tonight?”

Ten nods and collapses against his mattress, fighting against the squeeze of tears in his throat. “After Sicheng’s back.”

“Right,” Yangyang says, then clears his throat. “I’m glad you’re safe.”

* * *

The tears start spilling again once they both leave, and he bites into his pillow and tries not to actually sob. He doesn’t know what’s happening. He doesn’t know what these faded dreams are. They’re deeply upsetting in a way nightmares rarely have been. 

With something close to a wheeze, he lifts himself from his bed and into the bathroom, refusing to see it as anything like the one at work. This is where he drenches himself in the shower and strains his stress out through the drain. He _can’t_ avoid cars and bathrooms and certainly not darkness.

He’s going to take a shower then drag his books from his shelves to see if he can find a damn thing about disembodied voices and random bloodbaths. If any of these scares have to do with The Night, he’s bound to find at least something.

Under the hot spray of the shower, he tries to revive his brain, scraping over his memories for what he’s dealing with. He would suspect a Haunt, but those can’t create concrete effects or leave the place they’re tied to. Their craft is phantom, inhuman noises and jump scares. Not saying his name in a human voice or leaving a pint of blood across the floor at his place of work. 

It could be an Interloper, but those are the kinds of things you see in the corner of your vision all hours of the day—stalkers who keep at a distance until someone crosses the space for them. They’re not lethal until an attempt is made on their safety.

Almost no Night creature is lethal. Almost none of them put a real effort into trying to harm anyone.

He decides to wash his hair while he’s there, slowly working himself better and drowning in the smells of chamomile and hibiscus. As he steps out of the shower, he can hear Yukhei and Yangyang laughing through the thin walls and breathes in a feeling of belonging.

That vanishes very quickly as soon as he turns around with his towel in his hands to face the mirror.

He swallows a cry, but only barely, hitting the rack behind him hard enough to bruise his shoulder blades. His heart chokes him, nails pinching into the skin around his navel in fright.

There’s a stranger in his mirror against a backdrop of velvet black, slim profile sharp and smooth as he curls over something Ten can’t see. His dark hair hangs in his face, tip of his nose soft but cheekbones high, skin pale.

Ten takes a ragged breath, and that’s all he manages to do before the man’s head whips up, eyes frighteningly dark and wide. Ten’s pinned to the wall by them and the shape of a swear taking over this being’s mouth before he—it—raises its elbow and smashes it into the mirror.

The glass shatters. Loudly. But it’s not louder than Ten’s screaming.

He can barely hear the door slamming open, can barely hear Yukhei try to shake him out of his hysteria.

“What happened? What’s happening? Ten? _Ten.”_

“I don’t know!” he cries. His towel has fallen. There’s a sharp pain in his foot. “I don’t _know!_ I’m going insane!”

Yukhei bodily carries him out of the bathroom still dripping, foot bleeding, in the midst of a panic attack as everything coalesces and crashes into him. He’s cradled on his bed until the ceiling stops dropping, stops dropping lower and threatening to break and crush him. He’s cradled to soft whispers of _you’re okay_ and the searing feeling of something being drawn over his heart.

His breathing settles.

He can feel Yukhei’s sigil burn against his skin desperately. It’s the wrong pole for his nature, and it absolutely hurts—nearly excruciatingly—but Yukhei did what he knows how to do, and Ten remembers how to breathe against the harsh sting and throbbing insistence for him to feel peace.

Yangyang’s sitting at the edge of the bed with a bloodied rag in his hands. “What happened?” he asks, but the edge in his voice makes it close enough to a demand. He’s nervous, worried. Ten can hear that much.

He tells them, eyes trained on the unmoving ceiling. The words are shaky coming out of his chest, but he’s flanked by two witches who, put together, have seen enough of the spooky and strange to foster understanding.

“What the fuck,” is what Yangyang has to say when Ten’s done. “Something’s trying to kill you.”

“Can’t be the man in the mirror,” Yukhei muses.

“Or maybe they’re trying to make me lose my mind,” Ten says, eyes not wavering from the ceiling still. He feels like he’s been tossed around like someone playing pingpong with a horsefly. It’s not like he hasn’t seen terrifying things sprout from The Night, but generally they don’t follow him around trying to make him feel like he could die any second. Presumably, he’d be dead already if The Night were seriously after him.

That’s been foiled at least twice now—he can’t say for sure how many times he narrowly escaped death without knowing in the past half-day.

“Well, apparently they don’t have to try very hard.” 

Ten shoots Yangyang a look for that comment, his first time looking at either of them since the mirror, and he finds his eyes a warm brown in the light of his bedroom. Yangyang smiles at him, comforting in its worried playfulness. “I gotta go pick Winwin up, though,” he says, “if you think you’ll be okay.”

“I’ll stay with him,” Yukhei says firmly, and Yangyang nods.

* * *

Yangyang leaves only after nabbing a salve from his bedroom, and Ten works with Yukhei to clean up the glass from the floor of his bathroom. After that, Ten cares for his foot and chest in a pair of basketball shorts as Yukhei orders takeout. The Day’s sun sigil of peace has left a pink burn in his skin. He knows if he did the same to Yukhei with one of his own sigils, it would burn him just as badly. Nonetheless, he’s thankful Yukhei was thinking that quickly.

“Thank you,” he says as soon as Yukhei hangs up. He gestures at his chest, and Yukhei smiles at him regretfully.

“Sorry,” he says. “I couldn’t think of anything else.”

“It helped,” Ten promises and tests his foot against the floor. “Books.”

“Books,” Yukhei agrees.

* * *

By the time their roommates are pushing themselves through the door, Yukhei has visibly reacquainted himself with the feeling of frustration, and Ten is doing his best not tease someone committed to helping him. Yukhei seems to gladly take the opportunity to leave his book on the floor to envelop Sicheng in a hug, though.

“I just saw you three hours ago,” Sicheng says, but his brown eyes blush grey, so he’s obviously not complaining.

“Did Yangyang fill you in?” Ten asks from the floor, legs folded under himself.

Sicheng nods and nudges Yukhei away from him. “And I have a question,” he says, moving into their sitting space to push himself across the couch cushions. “Did you see anything you shouldn’t have?”

No words have ever hit Ten so hard. He scrambles to his feet, leaving behind Yukhei’s quiet “whoa” as he rushes to his bedroom to search for his bag. He has to swallow his fear of being alone in the room, but he’s emerging with his backpack in hand and no attempts on his life from the brief journey.

“A necklace,” he says, and rattles his bag as he half-limps back over to them and spills its contents to the floor. Among his wallet, tissue pack, switchblade, and other miscellany, the crimson gem and silver chain clink and shine on the faux wooden flooring. The doorbell rings in that moment, so he drops his bag and backs toward the door as they all investigate it from a safe, non-tactile distance. “It slipped out from the rift I made when I banished the Haunt.” Breathless, he closes his hand around the knob and opens the door for the food delivery. “I don’t know what it—”

Something hits him firmly from behind and there’s a wet, crunching, indescribable sound right in front of his face. A wheeze, a rattle.

Ten struggles on an inhale, heat shrouding his back as his eyes trail across a pale, bare arm jutting out over his shoulder and ending right in the middle of some _thing_ standing just outside their apartment doorway. The tips of its reaching, ink-black limbs skate down his chest until they are limp at its sides. Blood crackles from the crushed face of what has to be the most humanoid Night creature there possibly is—a freakishly near Interloper, facial form broken by a perfect, steady fist. Scarlet drips down the hand, and Ten feels a breath against his cheek, a beat of a human heart against his back.

“I beg for you to pay attention.”

Ten succumbs to a full-body shudder as whoever’s behind him grabs his hip and moves him to the side. He sees a slim profile, a softly rounded nose, and dark hair before the door closes in front of him with a harsh click and it’s just him standing behind a closed front entrance with his roommates frozen and silent less than two meters away.

His chest stings in long streaks where the Night creature skimmed its sharp nails across his bare skin, and his back still feels warm.

His roommates come to life.

“Oh my god,” Yangyang says. “He came out of nowhere.”

“Get away from the _door,”_ says Sicheng, and Ten staggers back with Sicheng’s vice grip around his forearm. “Who was that.”

Words fail him.

Somehow, Yukhei knows. “Was that mirror man?”

“Yes,” Ten says, voice sizzling from shock. “Yeah, that was him.”

The doorbell rings again.

“No,” says Sicheng.

 _“Yes,”_ says Yangyang. “It could be our order.”

“I don’t care,” says Sicheng.

“It could be mirror man,” says Yukhei.

Ten opens the door.

There’s blood on the doorstep, but the delivery woman doesn’t seem to notice, though she does notice how Ten doesn’t have a shirt on. “Oh, uh,” she says, and hands over the two bags of delivery. Sicheng takes them wordlessly as Ten signs and tips, then closes the door, locks it, and continues to stand there.

“Ten,” Sicheng says, and Ten steps obediently away and back toward their sitting area.

He’s shaken, but less than he was with the prior experiences.

“He’s—” Ten starts and sits down numbly to stare at all the open books they have scattered on the ground. “Protecting me.”

Those words are met with initial silence.

Sicheng sits on the couch, forearms propped on his knees, Yangyang won’t stop staring at the door, and Yukhei pulls one of the delivery bags toward himself to rummage.

“Kinda evens out, doesn’t it?” Yukhei says eventually as he carefully lays out the boxes. “Someone’s trying to get you killed, another person is trying to save your ass.”

“Why?” Yangyang says, then realizes with a blink and a laugh, “I don’t mean—no. No, I did.”

Ten pulls a desolate expression, but Yangyang implying that he’s not sure why anyone would want to save his ass lightens the mood. As insulting as it has room to be.

“It’s gotta be the necklace, right?” asks Yukhei. “Why’s it important?”

“I won’t lie,” says Sicheng. “I don’t give a fuck.” And him swearing rips a laugh out of Yangyang even as Sicheng presses onward. “Seriously. I don’t care. Just send it back. Open another rift and send it back. It’s not worth the trouble.”

Ten considers this as he accepts a bburinkle drumstick from Yukhei. “Okay,” he decides. 

But when he tears into their flooring with a tip of one of his arrows and drops the blood-red necklace into the rift, he feels a surge of resistance as it falls through the crack.

Then resignation. Regret as the rift seals its lips and leaves their floor scarless.

“Okay,” he tells the air between him and his roommates, unable to ignore the massive lift of weight around them the moment the necklace is gone. It’s The Night’s problem again.

He busies himself with fried chicken to forget.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [twitter](https://twitter.com/speckledsolana)   
>  [curiouscat](https://t.co/zW26zmaxzw?amp=1)   
> 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw: sex in the last scene

They don’t concern themselves with the books for the rest of the night, hoping and convinced that the situation is done with until proven otherwise. The biggest concern Ten has for the night is licking the fried chicken cheese dust off his fingertips.

It’s only when he’s back in his bed after refusing company, unable to sleep in the slightest, that he comes to with a wheeze.

Night creatures are _invincible_ outside of their realm. One heavy punch to an Interloper’s face wouldn’t have stopped it in its tracks.

Mirror man is from The Night.

He feels like someone has dropped a bag of bricks onto his stomach. There’s no other possible explanation—humans and their inventions can’t do any real harm to Night creatures. Historically, there’s never been a truthful account of a Night-killer, and although Interlopers are supposed to be the most human of the Night creatures in appearance…

Ten, a Night witch fairly convinced he’s no longer in mortal danger, pushes himself out of bed to rummage in his bathroom drawers for sleeping pills. He doesn’t have a shift until lunchtime—he can afford to sleep in. He just hopes the dreams haven’t left him along with the necklace.

* * *

_“i wasn’t going to show up out of nowhere and tell him what to do. has anything i’ve ever shared with you about him suggested he’d do what some stranger told him?”_

_there’s a laugh, deep and quiet. “mine wouldn’t either.”_

_in the silence, ten’s able to get his eyes to focus on the mirror. the space is in slightly sharper focus, its furniture shifting less, and he thinks he must be in a bedroom. there isn’t a humanoid figure in sight, but an open door glows silver with light, leaking across a wide, rose-colored bedspread. it’s a jarringly soft color among still-amorphous shadows._

_“you’re back to leaving him alone again, then?”_

_the silence persists, and ten takes his first tentative step, watching his washed-out reflection in the mirror to avoid the corner of the bed. something tells him that if he looks away from his mirror, he’ll be overwhelmed with confusion. he hears a stream of water in the bathroom turn on, but ten busies himself trying not to trip up over a tangle of clothing on the floor._

_he fails to hear mirror man’s response clearly over white noise of water pouring out into a sink. “... seen him. i don’t—it’s going to be...”_

_ten reaches carefully for the doorway, then raps his knuckles on the wood._

_“ten? ten! get_ OUT.”

Ten breaks through his drugged sleep with a breath so hard that he spends the first minute coughing into his sheets.

He knows he shouldn’t be smiling, and yet.

* * *

Kun, just getting off his shift when Ten arrives, looks relieved to see him normal again, and Ten returns five minutes early from his break for Johnny and Johnny alone.

He doesn’t exactly know what to make of his dreams still, and he has a midnight appointment again that will stop him from falling into unconsciousness too soon. There's a full day to think about what he’s seen—to decide if he’s really visited The Night or if it was some other impossible realm he knows nothing about.

There are no more threats on his life, though that doesn’t stop him from walking to and from work. Just because he’s back to normal doesn’t mean he's ready. On his way home, he plugs into music as usual and loses himself to the web, trying to find any academic articles on The Night and possible humanoids living there. It’s a difficult thing to search, though, and he keeps coming up against articles talking about attempted human breaches into The Night.

It’s never been successful, and he’s a man of hubris, but not to that extent.

Still, he sinks himself into his books again as soon as he’s home, juggling reading with knotting the Nightmare Ward he’s meant to be casting for his client less than three hours from now.

“Should I drive there?” Ten asks the air, knowing Sicheng will hear him from the kitchen table where he’s been logging his work notes into his notebook for the last forty minutes.

After a moment of silence, Sicheng answers, not looking up from where his pen scrawls, “Has anything tried to kill you today?”

“No.”

“Go for it. There’s a hand mirror in our bathroom somewhere,” Sicheng says, not batting an eye. Ten laughs and starts trying to imagine how he’ll fashion a hand mirror to the side of his car. He thinks he’ll probably ask Yukhei for his keys instead.

* * *

He gets back to the apartment at 2 a.m. after the long trek out to and back from his client, filling up Yukhei’s car again, and stopping at the drugstore to get more sleeping supplements. No one else is awake when he tips himself into his bathroom to prepare for bed, filling up a glass of water to knock back two pills. He wants to see if he can stop himself from being woken up—assuming he’ll be able to go back again.

The aluminum crinkles in the packaging as he thumbs the seal to break it open, but then the entire sleeve is yanked out of his grip and he’s staring into dark, dark eyes. His face is so close. He’s so close. Locks of hair brush his eyelashes, mouth flat and unamused.

“Stop that,” Mirror says and steps out of Ten’s space, out of his reach even as Ten lurches to grab the front of his black shirt. The air folds over Mirror and Ten’s knuckles slam into the tall rift in the middle of the air like he’s punching metal, and then the seam is gone, the man, his pills, and the moment gone with it.

His hand throbs and he hisses in sympathy to his knuckles.

He doesn’t have the sleeping pills, but at least he knows he’s still being watched, and he doesn’t need drugs to fall asleep.

* * *

_“—n you could, but.” a sigh. “he’s here again.”_

_“damnit, ten.”_

Again, he wakes with a gasp, every time he’s pushed out not unlike being woken by falling.

“You can’t keep me from _sleeping,”_ he tells the air, petulant now. He turns to look at his phone. He’s only slept three hours and he has three more to go. Unable to help the laugh that bubbles up in his throat, he knows Mirror will be upset with him and wonders if this time, he’ll catch the expression on his face.

* * *

_he’s reading._

_ten doesn’t move._

_everything is blurrier again, but the longer ten gazes at mirror’s profile, the smoother and more stable it gets. he’s curled over a book, fingers tugging on his forelock, and the thumb of his other hand stroking over the corner of one page slowly. still, but idle, eyelashes soft as he blinks._

_in the watery, shifting light and the glass of his reflection, he’s handsome._

_“you saved my life,” ten says, finally breaking the peace._

_just like before, mirror’s head whips up, and ten barely has a second to register the contorted expression on mirror’s face before he flings his book across the room to slam right into the back of ten’s head,_ and he’s waking up, laughter choking out of his throat and mixing with the sound of his alarm.

He feels like shit, for the record. Not being able to sleep normally has him feeling fucked up, but there’s also a silly amount of delight and wonder bubbling up in his throat and brain.

It’s the opposite reaction of what he had before, and he embraces it.

He wonders if Mirror knows about sleep sigils and elects that he’ll try it that night.

* * *

_it’s clearer than ever. ten is sitting on the ground and does not move. knows, now, that moving and speaking will make mirror aware of his presence if he’s sharing the room with him. and he is._

_he can feel the floor under him, this time, smooth and cool._

_mirror is at his desk in the bedroom with the pink bedcovers. his forearms are holding him over papers and notebooks on his desk, but he’s looking at the wall the desk is hugging. it’s bare, nondescript._

_he closes his eyes and sinks his forehead between his loose hands, spine sharp in the curve of his neck. ten looks around the room as mirror ceases to move aside from the slow rise and fall of his chest hunched between his shoulders._

_there’s a window above the bed, bright and glowing, and if ten squints, he sees something fluttering slowly in a sweet shade of orange. only after seeing it does he hear the high tinkling of a fuurin and see its glass bell. he hears birds. The air is slow and warm around him._

_“what’s your name?” ten asks, and mirror chokes on an inhale, knee slamming into his desk and chair clattering back._

_“you can’t be here,” he says, stumbling to a pained stand and reaching for him, and ten scrambles back away from his fingers, looking away from the reflection he’s been tied to, and doesn’t find himself lost._

_“what’s your name?” he repeats._

_mirror touches him, palm clapping to ten’s clothed chest, but nothing happens. all he feels is warmth and a small push that has him leaning back on his elbows. his confidence surges as mirror’s eyes grow panicked._

_“what did you do?”_

_“what’s your name?”_

_“you can’t keep coming here.”_

_“i don’t do it on purpose,” ten says and shifts his weight to wrap his fingers around mirror’s wrist. he’s warm like yukhei. mirror jolts in his grip and tries to pull away. ten doesn’t let him. “what’s your name.”_

_“you can’t know me.” the longer he stays, the more rich the details are. mirror’s voice is mellow and emotive, warm like his skin, warm like the air._

_“you saved my life.”_

_“you_ can’t _know me, ten. i made a mistake.”_

_ten looks—really looks—at the pinches in Mirror’s face. the smoothness, the elegance. he’s handsome. “you made that mistake three times.”_

_“five.” mirror has stopped trying to draw away from him, knees on the floor, hand bracing himself so he doesn’t fall into where ten has him in his grip. right over his heart. mirror looks in pain. the kind of pain that’s self-induced._

_“five,” ten says, and holds the word in his mouth._

_“i couldn’t let you die,” mirror says, condemning himself ever deeper. his eyes are dark, the air is warm and swirling._

_“can’t,” ten says, trying the word, and Mirror squeezes his eyes closed like he’s right. it’s a yawning feeling in ten’s chest not to be corrected. “i won’t tell anyone.”_

_“you already have.”_

_“they won’t tell anyone.”_

_mirror doesn’t look much older than ten is himself. late twenties. ten wonders who he is._

_“can i have your name?” ten tries. “you know mine.”_

_mirror’s eyes open and he shakes his head, swallowing, sharp adam’s apple almost pretty. “we all know our other’s name. you just. you can’t. you can’t know me, ten.”_

_“how well do you know_ me?” _ten asks and sees mirror’s expression devolve into anguish._

_“intimately,” he says, and for a moment, it’s all ten can do to breathe. his heart is loud. mirror has to be feeling it._

_“then you know—”_

_“please don’t.”_

_“you_ know _what i’m like.”_

_“ten.”_

_“tell me your name.”_

_mirror’s fingers dig into ten’s chest, but it doesn’t hurt. he sees the soft part in mirror’s hair when he drops his head, the way his locks sift and fall forward like silk. mirror takes breath after breath, and ten wonders how hard_ his _heart is beating. “hendery.”_

_it’s a strange name, but ten snatches it from the air and holds it in his mind until it burns._

_he’s taken enough, now._

_ten lets hendery’s wrist go, breathes out, and lets himself fall awake._

_this time, it’s hendery who reaches for him as he slips away._

* * *

He wakes up slowly, blinking up at the morning ceiling. He can almost hear a wind chime.

“Hendery,” he says aloud, and it feels warm on his tongue.

* * *

_“is this the night?” ten asks. hendery is keeping his distance from him, sitting stiffly in his chair as ten sits on the bed._

_“will you only go after i answer?” hendery asks. he looks tired, distraught, but ten falls asleep and arrives here without knowing how and certainly without intention the first few times. he’s willfully making it so hendery can’t push him out because if he’s going to be here, he wants to_ be _here._

_“do i only get one question per visit?” it’s manipulative of him—ten knows this. it’s a leading question that’s unfair, at best, to hendery’s sense of secrecy, but he has no notion of consequence._

_hendery frowns, pained. “only one,” he says, and it’s unfair, but he’s won. “yes.”_

* * *

_“am i invincible here?”_

_“yes.”_

* * *

_“what’s the purpose of the night creatures?”_

_“can we stick to simple questions?”_

_“are the night creatures wild?”_

_“most of them.”_

* * *

_“do you have to look in mirrors to see me?”_

_“no.”_

* * *

_“how long have you known i exist?”_

_“my whole life.”_

* * *

_“how old are you?”_

_“28. we were born within months of each other.”_

_“you’re older than me?”_

_“yes.”_

* * *

_“have your kind ever broken this… rule before?”_

_“yes. it’s dangerous. it’s not encouraged for a reason.”_

* * *

_“what was the necklace?”_

_“an heirloom. that haunt was someone’s pet.”_

_“why did they try to kill me?”_

_“it’s the only way of getting something back if it won’t be given up voluntarily.”_

_“oh. that’s shitty as hell.”_

_“it’s rarely a problem.”_

_“thank you for protecting me.”_

_he’s met with silence._

* * *

_ten lies on the bed, brushing his fingertips over the soft fabric. “come sit with me.”_

_“no.”_

_“why not?”_

_“is that your question?”_

_“yes.”_

_“please ask a different one.”_

_“but now i’m curious.”_

_“please ask a different question.”_

_“are you in love with me?”_

_the fuurin tinkles in a long, heavy stretch of silence._

_“i don’t want to sit next to you because i’m scared of you.”_

_ten feels a laugh rise up through his chest and to the back of his throat, but bites it down. When he raises his head to look hendery in the face, he’s guarded, hugging his chest. ten nods and lets himself fall back awake._

* * *

_“if i bother you enough times to come sit with me, will you cave eventually?”_

_“ten.”_

_“do you want to? or am i harassing you?”_

_there’s a shift of the mattress as it adjusts to hendery sitting down on the edge. hendery watches him with wide, dark eyes that hold a little something like betrayal._

_“can i ask a different question?”_

_hendery hesitates, mouth thin, but nods. he rakes his hair back, swallowing, nervous maybe._

_“does everyone fall for their other?”_

_“no.”_

* * *

_“can you visit me anytime?”_

_“yes.”_

_“why don’t you?”_

_“i don’t want to encourage this.”_

_“it won’t stop me.”_

_the window is open today, and the breeze eddies between them, hendery sitting at the foot of the bed and ten at its head. hendery’s hands are knotted in his lap. “i’m starting to realize that.”_

* * *

_“are you in danger from me visiting you?”_

_“not if you can keep a secret for the rest of your life.”_

_“how did this happen?”_

_“i broke the barrier between us to save your life and did it too many times in a row for it to repair itself. and now you’ve hopped the breach too many times for it ever to be fixed. i told you i made a mistake.”_

_“have you done it before the necklace?”_

_“not many times.”_

_“have i ever seen you those times?”_

_“no. you’re not supposed to.”_

_“i would have liked to have seen you.”_

_hendery rubs his face, sighing. the air is hot rather than warm, daylight vivid against the soft colors of hendery’s bedroom._

_ten almost thinks the silence dragging out is his cue to go home._

_“i always wanted you to.”_

_he’s been piecing impressions together. he thinks he knows._

_“come spend a day with me.”_

_“i shouldn’t.”_

_“only come if you want to.”_

* * *

Visiting Hendery has stopped being a tax on his body. When he drags himself out of The Night, he wakes up to his alarm. Rested, quiet after he shuts his phone off. He hasn’t told his roommates about anything since his initial, hysterical confessions, and everything is easy and normal. He just has one more thing to look forward to.

He would like to not ask any questions next time he visits. To not go in with that intention, at least. Hendery has only gradually become less tense, and it’s still not an expression absent from his body language. He’s stressed that Ten is able to visit him at all, and that tension has not eased.

“What do you do,” he asks Johnny as he ties on his apron, “when Kun’s not ready to take steps forward?” Ten knows Hendery might hear him asking if he’s actively listening. He wishes Hendery were bound to mirrors so he could cover the full-length on the wall. They haven’t talked candidly enough for this to be a conversation that would be comfortable to overhear.

“Uh, well,” says Johnny, and Ten knows he’s being looked at—this is the kind of question someone would ask when they’ve been in a relationship for some time and Ten hasn’t been upfront about anything of the sort.

“I’m asking for a friend,” he says, and Johnny believes him.

“We talk about it, usually. Though… I hope we don’t give the impression that he’s the unsteady one in the relationship. If anything, I’m the more nervous one,” Johnny says, lips tucked into an unsure frown.

“No!” He waves his hands and pats Johnny’s arm as they pass into the restaurant, breathing in the morning shift. “No,” he says. “I wasn’t making any assumptions. You’re just here and Kun’s not.”

“Right,” Johnny says, easing up and giving a smile. “Yeah, okay. We just talk about it, then, when either of us are having issues. There’s no other way around it.”

“What if you’re still not ready?”

“Then we wait. We’ve been together for a while,” Johnny says, picking up a fresh notepad to slip into his apron. “We’re playing the long game. Not a lot is going to make or break us, at this point.”

* * *

In the middle of his break, Johnny pokes his head in and says, “Were you expecting someone?”

Ten feels an absurd surge of hope, then ridiculous self-awareness that immediately tamps down the rise of light in his chest. “Why?”

“There’s, like, a Guanheng here to see you.”

Ten scrunches his face up, scrubbing his brain for anything that could possibly ring a bell. Though he comes up with nothing—nothing from university, his old dance class, his freelance connections—he still snaps the lid over his lunch and sets his chopsticks aside. “Let me see. Which table are they at?”

“Five,” Johnny says and lets Ten pass him. “I gotta take an order. Let me know if you need me to do something.”

“Mm.” Ten skims the back of the restaurant to keep his distance and tries not to make his snooping obvious when he checks on the other side of the section divider.

It doesn’t even take him a moment—he’s never studied anyone’s face like he has Hendery’s. He could draw him by heart if he needed to, and the singular person sitting at table number five, running his fingers up and down his chopsticks, is definitely Hendery.

“Guanheng?” he says as soon as he’s close enough, still unsure on that bit and debating whether he should be amused. Hendery’s head jerks up and his mouth flinches somewhere between a smile and a nervous line. “Is that your code name?”

“I—I think so,” he says haltingly, not moving his eyes from watching Ten sit across from him, trained on him like he’s been cornered somehow. “If it sounds alright.”

“Did you steal it from some unsuspecting Other?” Ten can’t help but tease, and Hendery lets out a heavy breath almost close enough to be called a laugh.

“I only see you.”

Ten’s thought about it. He’s thought about this weird soulmate business their worlds have conjured up where one person’s aware of the other their entire lives while fifty percent of the equation remains oblivious. He’s thought about how it was sheer, disastrously bad luck that managed to break them through an entire construct.

Hendery’s response to the one question he’d asked—“How well do you know me?”—rings in his ears at least once every hour of every day.

Painfully, with so much feeling: “Intimately.”

 _Does it hurt?_ he’s wanted to ask. _To accept I’d never know you?_

There’s still something odd about Hendery outside of the bounds of The Night. His eyes are nearly unnerving—truly an abyssal black. Ten’s _not_ unnerved, but only because he’s looked Hendery in the face every night for nearly two weeks. There’s a depth and emotion to them that human eyes simply lack.

“It’s a good name,” Ten decides to say. “You should keep it.”

Hendery swallows, nods, and fiddles with his menu, finally looking away. “You,” he begins, and then fades out. He swallows again. Ten feels like he should be reaching out to hold his hand, but they haven’t crossed that boundary since Hendery last tried to push him through the rift. “You wanted me here, right?” Hendery asks, and it’s so tight in his throat he almost sounds strangled. When he looks up, his eyes are big and drowning.

“Yes,” Ten breathes. “Guanheng, yes. Visit me whenever you’d like.” He looks down to witness the tremble in Hendery’s fingers as he tries to set his chopsticks down without clacking them against the tabletop. “Would you like to order something? I’m on my break for the moment,” Ten tells him, raising his eyes back to Hendery’s almost summery yet Stygian black, “and I’ll stay here with you until it’s over, but if you want to order something, I’ll get it for you.”

“Tteokbokki?” Hendery says, and his voice is still jaded.

“My favorite?” Ten clarifies. He feels like Hendery’s warmth is suffusing through his chest.

Guanheng nods.

“Sure,” Ten says. “Yeah. I think you’ll like it.”

* * *

_“i’m really sorry.”_

_“you really don’t have to be.”_

_“it must have been awkward for you.”_

_“it wasn’t.”_

* * *

The next day, Hendery walks with him to work.

He’s wearing a pink shirt.

Ten wonders if Hendery knows him well enough to see that he’s falling in love.

* * *

_ten only barely finds the mindless courage to hold hendery’s hand. hendery flinches, then stares, then swallows and knits their fingers together._

_“all those first times I saw you,” ten says._

_“mm.”_

_“who were you talking to?”_

_“a friend. my roommate. he’s… if you want to meet him, i can ask.”_

_“does he know i’m seeing you?”_

_“yes.”_

_“can i tell my roommates as well?”_

_hendery nods._

* * *

Weeks pass. Ten meets Xiaojun, then learns that the reason they’re friends—and especially roommates—is because Xiaojun just happens to be stuck with Yangyang as his Other. It’s something Ten can’t help but laugh about. He already sees enough of Yangyang’s terrifying shenanigans and, in contrast, terribly boring pastimes to feel the utmost sympathy.

_“do you know who has my other two roommates?”_

_“we’ve met,” xiaojun admits, “briefly. they’re kind.”_

_“my roommates are in good hands, then.”_

_“everyone usually is,” says xiaojun. his smile is sharp and reminds ten of yangyang. he wonders if his own mannerisms have bled into hendery. “sometimes, though, it’s better to let someone die.”_

It wasn’t meant as a threat. Hendery explained that they’ll usually corrupt with a bad Other or just let fate take its course. He learns he wasn’t strictly in Hendery’s hands until he was five. Some people, according to Xiaojun, are never an Other.

They agree the world is a wonky place.

* * *

Hendery saves his life one more time, to keep things interesting, and almost yanks Ten’s arm out of its socket in the effort. 

It’s an opportune moment, in Ten’s opinion, as the shale he’d slipped on during the hike Kun had recommended tumbles down the cliff face, to stare into Hendery’s wide, frightened eyes and ask him one last time if he’s in love with him.

His arm aches, Hendery’s hold hooked around his waist. He’s breathing harder than Ten is, fearing death more than Ten does.

“Do you love me?” asks Ten, and he’s not reaching. He’s really not. Under the sun, Hendery looks like the perfect relief of some stunning deity. He’s wondered a hundred times now. “Hendery?”

“Now?” Hendery asks him, voice throttled, eyes pained. “You’re asking me that again _now?”_

“Why not now?”

Hendery gives a choked laugh. Ten’s been managing to make him laugh lately, and he loves every ridiculous hiccup of it. “I thought—” he starts, swallowing the last of his agitated breaths, and Ten watches as he relaxes and smooths out. “I thought you knew? Already.”

“I want to hear it.”

He gets a faceful of Hendery’s sigh, and then an apology as Ten laughs. When he reaches to touch over Hendery’s heart, his pulse is still racing. “Of course you do,” Hendery says and reaches to remove Ten’s hand. “Stop that. Stop monitoring my heart.”

“It’s sweet,” Ten insists.

“I love you.”

All he feels is warmth. It’s everywhere, sweltering softly like Hendery’s so, so familiar room. “I love you too,” he says and gets to bask in the way Hendery’s eyes fill and drown and glow.

“Is it because I saved your life?” Hendery whispers, and the wind on top of this trail nearly whips it away.

“It’s because I love you,” Ten says because he doesn’t like cutting up words into reasons. He feels it, he’s been feeling it for months. “I love you.”

Hendery swallows, this time not out of nerves, and says, “Okay.”

* * *

_he gets a kiss, finally, in hendery’s bedroom on top of pink sheets. it’s warm. everything’s always warm like night never knows any other darkness than varying shades of black. he’s never seen the night after sunfall. it’s always glowing. always gold._

_hendery pushes him into the sheets and kisses him until ten can feel his heart in his belly, until he can feel hendery’s bare skin against his palms. his ashen nipples and coarse hair leading down from his navel. he gets to see hendery beneath him, chest fluttering, vulnerable and mortal in his own world where ten can suck bruises into his skin that will stay and ache._

_he refuses to be shy over how hendery worships him. how he’s known him for almost 26 years and knows every flaw, every raging ennui, every gnarl and snare and nasty fault and still finds ways to touch him like he’s beautiful._

_he witnesses the proud, beautiful jut of hendery’s sex, witnesses his shuddering, overstimulated moans though he’s barely touched him. like the sun is cresting in hendery’s chest and the emotions have made him run through miles of stimulation._

_he’s asked before this how long hendery’s loved him, and he had no answer. no real answer. “it’s felt like always,” he said, and ten doesn’t wonder why he shakes apart._

_“did you ever touch yourself thinking of me?” he asks now, curious to see the pain of asking an invasive question flash in hendery’s eyes, to watch the humiliated flush streak up his chest in blotches._

_“can you ask another question, please?” he asks, shuddered, jilted and slurred, and ten laughs because hendery ends up answering anyways as ten’s crown hits his prostate._

_“how?” he cries, voice faded and sloppy with the nonsense of emotion and pleasure and humiliation. “you always. ask. like you already know.” his throat tightens as his body curves, as his testicles draw firm in ten’s palm. “i always—” he gasps as he unravels, as he grips the sheets and whines. “you,” he says, choked off and worn, and ten thinks it’s answer enough even as his own orgasm rushes in his ears._

_he tries not to collapse after the white has faded, but hendery’s looking at him like he’s daylight and it makes his heart weak even if his arms can hold him up. “me?” ten asks him, relaxed and feeling the glow under his skin. he wants for hendery’s lips, so he takes them._

_“you,” he sighs against ten’s lips, and warmth spreads through the night._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [twitter](https://twitter.com/speckledsolana)   
>  [curiouscat](https://t.co/zW26zmaxzw?amp=1)   
> 


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